A new poll shows Gov. Christie, right, is well positioned if he chooses to run for re-election in 2013. But it also shows Newark Mayor Cory Booker, left, could give the governor a competitive race.

But the media, candidates, and the candidates' most fervent supporters take the numbers seriously. In 2012, supporters of Mitt Romney and President Obama argued intensely about polls in the presidential race right up until Election Day, and beyond.

In that climate of intensified scrutiny, polls taken by the Eagleton Institute of Politics just before last year's elections for senator and governor stood out by overstating, by double digits, the winning margins of Sen. Cory Booker and Governor Christie.

Eagleton ordered a study from a New York consulting firm to find out what went wrong, and on Wednesday released the answer: Questions were ordered in a way that "primed" voters to say they supported Booker, a Democrat, and Christie, a Republican.

Pollsters say it is well established that once someone says in a survey they approve of the job an official is doing or that they have a favorable opinion of him, they are less likely to say later they are going to vote for someone else. It is called "cognitive consistency."

But Eagleton asked a series of questions about Christie's job performance and his handling of superstorm Sandy issues, then asked if respondents planned to vote for Christie or state Sen. Barbara Buono, the Democratic candidate.

The final poll before the gubernatorial election showed Christie leading Buono by 36 percentage points. He won by 22 points.

David Redlawsk, Eagleton's pollster, said he decided to combine head-to-head campaign questions with a series of questions about Christie's job performance and handling of superstorm Sandy, questions that the Institute has been asking about at regular intervals to measure his performance throughout his gubernatorial term.

Normally, Redlawsk said, he would do a campaign poll separately, but he said he could not do that for budget reasons.

"I underestimated, quite frankly, how that would influence people into thinking good thoughts about Christie, particularly Democrats. And once we put the good thoughts there, it influenced the response in the head-to-head question," Redlawsk said.

Eagleton's final pre-election poll before the special election for Senate in October showed Booker leading Republican former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan by 22 percentage points. Booker won by 11 points.

In that poll, Eagleton had asked questions about the candidates' favorability before asking about a head-to-head matchup.

"We reminded people they felt good about Booker," he said. "More importantly, we reminded people they didn't know anything about Lonegan."

At a news conference in September, Lonegan dismissed Booker's lead.

“The Eagleton poll is notoriously off,” Lonegan said at the time.

The credibility of polls is constantly being questioned, and the reaction to the 2012 race, which underestimated the size of Obama's win, made it more intense.

"Everyone's more sensitive and everyone's tinkering, as opposed to relying on the basics that are out there," said Ed Goeas, a Republican campaign pollster in Virginia.

Gary Langer of New York-based Langer Research Associates, who analyzed Eagleton's 2013 surveys, said many reputable firms ask for similar reviews.

"These polls always undergo close scrutiny and for very good reason," Langer said.

"Sometimes it's helpful to call in another set of eyes."

Rob Santos, president of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, agreed that firms that want to be right all the time seek answers when they are not. He noted that the Gallup Organiation asked the University of Michigan to review why its findings in the 2012 presidential race were not as accurate as others.

What is unusual, Santos said, is for an organization to publicly release the findings the way Eagleton did.

"In that sense, I think this is a cause for celebration," Santos said. "I think this is exactly what we need in the polling world. … What's important is you learn from your mistakes, you're not willing to mask them."

Redlawsk said he is not sure if Eagleton will do a campaign poll on the Senate race this year, when Booker is seeking a full six-year term and five Republicans are seeking the nomination to challenge him.

But he said the experience will further Rutgers' educational mission.

"My focus is much more on policy and politics in the broad sense rather than the head-to-head election polling," he said. "The reason to do the post-mortem is I wanted to know whether there were other problems besides the problem with question order. I also wanted to be able to talk with the students about what happened."